


Flight of the Monarchs

by SorrySorrySorry



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon, another period piece
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 15:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13526823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SorrySorrySorry/pseuds/SorrySorrySorry
Summary: "Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,For he was likely, had he been put on,To have proved most royally."V.ii.401-403





	Flight of the Monarchs

The evening dragged on ad infinitum, some ill concoction of weather beating relentlessly against Elsinore until the cold pierced the inner walls, chilling what had been painted in hot blood. The fortress far from empty, but rather filled with different presence after the violent precedence of the arrival of Fortinbras and the hurried whispers to bring this and that, take the bodies here and there. Shadows had played across his face for the collection of nights afterward, at their darkest when he visited the prince’s chambers once all else had been burned (for there was so little room to bury them on short notice). Horatio moved with purpose toward them now, lowering his gaze as he passed the men of Norway who had only lingered following their abandoned deposition. He had no choice but to be optimistic, though his will drained from him the moment the chamber doors met his own tentative fingers. The brass was chilling as all else, and the knob was heavy enough to instill his reluctance, which was never really dead, but had its periods where it lay dormant. If anymore tragedy struck, Horatio reasoned, he would have likely been made aware beforehand, as whispers traveled among the servants quicker than snow could pile on the grounds outside, yet still his fear of further loss struck him whenever he left vacancy in his thoughts. Images of bodies under shroud haunted him as he pushed the doors open, and he was hesitant to lay his eyes on the bed; it was, however, his immediate need to do so.

Though the fire glowed, ever-kindled, in the chamber’s corner, the prince shivered from beneath his bedding. He was pallid, even so in the firelight, and appearing no better than on the evening of what had nearly been his forceful exit. What  _ had  _ been the king, queen and Laertes’ forceful exit. Dread still nestled in Horatio’s stomach, the picture of corpses burned into his eyes, and the coppery taste was slow to leave his senses. There was still daily talk that the prince would not last the evening, that this evening was surely the final of so many gruelling evenings, which was far from true. Every evening was surely the final one, every minute the final one until it wasn’t. For now, it was limbo, where Horatio moved quietly to the bedside, speaking in the same hoarse whisper until Hamlet stirred.

“My lord?”

A minute passed, and in pattern with all else, Hamlet inhaled, disproving it of what it predicted. “Even still, I’ve yet to change it with thee?” His eyes came open, heavy as fortress gates, and a smile curled weakly at the corners of his lips. In volume, he could hardly compete with the wind or the crackling of the fire, and it warranted Horatio’s subtle lean inward, fingers tangling in blankets until they found the prince’s hand. It was just as cold as it had always been, as cold as brass.

“Your meaning, sweet lord, evades me,” Horatio murmured.

While it seemed to pain him, Hamlet’s breath hitched in a feeble laughter. “So long as thy humor hangs so darkly on thee--it favors thee not, Horatio.”

“I am sorry, my lord.”

Without lifting it from his pillows, Hamlet shook his head. There were lapses in his consciousness as he searched for his words. “Then I should instruct thee of it,” he said finally. “Not now, but…”

Horatio squeezed the prince’s hand. “Not now. There’s other matters, my lord. Do you have appetite?”

“I have naught but that which thou seest before you, little as it is.”

With a feathered touch, Horatio moved Hamlet’s hair from his forehead. It was a source of both marvel and pain to hear him, even now, speaking so completely according to his usual fashion. “But say you’ll eat, I pray you.”

“As I am bid,” Hamlet replied. He had been robbed of all his ability for natural irritation, hollow wherever it was seated before. Now, he was more a cracking shell of those emotions he held the dearest, or the most often: his indignance, a shred of delight as thin as what would keep him sewn together, and the infallible melancholy he knew better than any other element. All else, his father had taken. “I know Norway stays and gains his good honor from my recovery, keeps me watered and fed as a domestic. ‘Tis rare thou hast been set to the task over his own men. Perchance he makes a servant of thee.”

“Your servant already,” Horatio said, bringing the prince’s palm to his lips and kissing there. “And my motive is my own.”

“Thou art confident the Norwegian diet is, by thy hand, well met? That fondness baked in with the meat will do its job of malady all the quicker?”

“I should wish it, my lord. I have the ingredient in total abundance and must put it to good use before expiration.”

Eyes fluttering shut again, Hamlet nodded, though long into the conversation he had already begun to struggle with his attentiveness, the fire easily drawing his gaze when he forgot himself. “Before expiration…,” he echoed. “Hurry then, before Fortinbras. I await thee.”

With another squeeze of the prince’s hand, Horatio rose, mumbling something about sending the physician to replace him but allowing the words to fall on now unconscious ears, stirred into nonexistence by the crackling fire. He crossed over to it, holding his hands out and checking its warmth for himself; he looked back at the bedding, considering whether or not it was enough, and he was only preventing in adding another layer by the potential of fever striking again, suddenly, as it seemed prone to do. It was, by far, one of most lamentable promises for Horatio’s return later in the evening, and he dreaded leaving the chamber at all. The guards outside--Denmark’s own for the greater trust they provided--greeted him with the same grimace as the days previous the moment he exited, shifting in humor only when he insisted, as he always did, that the prince was showing improvement. The more familiar, even so much as a friend, Marcellus, engaged him with a reflection of his own optimism, like a dull looking glass. He bore a thin smile and had the courage to actively meet Horatio’s gaze, at least. They shared an evening speaking to one another of things shared only between them and the prince, and Horatio had made a promise that they would do so again soon, now when they most needed the company. He would forget saying so by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, unable to consider it a priority.

For now, Horatio was preoccupied with minimizing his presence in the kitchen. The atmosphere there was touched deeply by the subtle norwegian addition to the current staff, this alongside the deaths and the prince’s persisting condition. Servants followed Horatio’s movements with subdued looks from him to one another, the lot of them falling back on what so often prevented them from breaking the ice--that was, no matter how long he lingered, none of the serving men were sure how to properly address the prince’s school fellow, least of all when he came down to cook for himself. He was met with a momentary silence and a set of wide doe’s eyes upon asking where tools were kept until he learned to memorize all positions for himself. In present, he moved swiftly to a table corner he usually occupied. As with all at Elsinore, those around him watched him under the pretense that he hadn’t been to the kitchens in a number of days, instead (and perhaps in rumored exaggeration) having not left the prince’s bedside. It was well into Horatio’s mise en place that muttering soon turned to direct question.

“How does he fare?” someone asked, loud enough to be heard but so quiet as to not be sought out and identified.

“Improving--the more so if I succeed here,” Horatio replied, looking upward, briefly, to the servants as he viewed them en masse. 

There was the soft sound of shuffling among the kitchen staff. Another untraceable voice found its volume. “Lord Fortinbras has already bid us…,” it trailed away, as if the rest was clear enough.

Vexation passed briefly over Horatio’s features. He wished for more than complacency as well as a greater wariness among the lower danes, itching at the thought of being so associated with them.  With their ease in accepting the presence of what was essentially an army, formerly hostile in intent, he was ashamed of them, since he didn’t consider the militant factor of Fortinbras and his men so easily forgotten. Again, greater wariness. He was wary, forced to conceal it before an audience he tried relentlessly to relate to. “There’s no harm in change today. Instruct me of the beneficial herbs, and I will use them,” he insisted, scanning the reaches of the space to find in-progress cooking scattered about. 

Having made memories of each article, Horatio settled on vials which were unfamiliar. As if he bid it with his thoughts alone, a servant collected them, sliding them over with a brief, darkened look. “Medicinals,” they said, apprehensive, “from Norway.”

“So says Lord Fortinbras?” Horatio asked, eyebrow quirked as he handled a particular container.

“Ay.”

Thin stems pressed eagerly against the glass, many springing upward to a cluster where the supposed herb flowered white. Suspicion manifested into pain playing at Horatio’s temples, and he felt the eyes of many on him the longer he took to inspect what he now turned over gently in his hand. As he removed the vial's stopper, the attention on him seemed to split as a biblical sea, and when he looked upward again, the view to the kitchen door had cleared. There, framed rigid in the doorway, was the aforementioned Fortinbras, who navigated quickly across the room with servants bobbing quickly out of his path. Regardless of his native state, he commandeered their timid reverence and was apparently able to perceive Horatio’s lack thereof. He stopped a meter short of Horatio’s work; as a material of nobility, while Hamlet was soft marble, he was stone unhewn. The lack of distance provided Horatio with view of the numerous scars that painted his flesh, some of which stretched as he made motion to speak. “Horatio? Or am I misled?”

A sudden stiffness ran rampant along Horatio’s spine. “In competent moiety,” he said, regretting any touch of wit in his voice almost immediately; Hamlet had made him too complacent, and as expected, there was something less than amusement in Fortinbras’ reaction.

He dressed in the same stringent temperament he’d worn since his arrival. “The prince’s minion,” he said, riddled with misgivings.

“His schoolfellow,” Horatio clarified.

Feigned mirth played across the norwegian’s face, pushing its way into the light like a beetle out of kindling. “In all measures his guest,” he said, stare flashing fleetingly over the vial. “He is surely not so untaught as to have thee yoked hither. What fetches has he as thy keeper?”

“Rather, my fetches, sir,” Horatio responded, bringing his fingers in mask over the transparency of the glass. He indicated his beginnings at cookery. “‘I would serve the prince most directly.”

A hand clapped down on Horatio’s shoulder, rattling him into silence. Fortinbras spoke lower, smile carving its steady way below his nose. “Ah, but there I have gotten the start of it. Give leave to the properties who are already set to the task. They receive mine own instruction for the young prince’s swift betterment.” 

The hand remained, and Horatio did his best to steel himself. Though the staff had long cleared to the corners of the space, he felt he was being encircled. “I doubt not your great self-bounty, sir. The good ones instruct me of herbs to your native persuasion,” he said, allowing the bottle in his hands to see the light again.

Grave understanding played between the two of them, and ingenuity colored the both of their voices in monotone unison. “Scholar, thou art: how far extends thy botanic knowledge? This lies within the acquaintanceship of thy mind and thy study?” Fortinbras asked, cooling down as nature had.

Horatio replied as quickly as the proper words sprung into his head--and he felt he needed them quickly. “Not so, sir,” he said. “While old antiquity understands me most intimately, mine own scholarship prevents me from any earthly specialization. Would I were not so ill-bred.” 

He was no actor. Fortinbras retracted his hand, going instead to rest it with the other upon his hips, where it played lazily with the hilt of a blade he had yet to draw. Horatio had not forgotten its original purpose. He watched Fortinbras closely, hanging on every veiled word. “Nothing but the young prince’s improvement reaches our ears; discredit not the steady melt of him, rushing flood waters thus to thine own detriment. Springtime comes with no difference in her time, and ‘twill assuredly touch him. The dews of it sit kindest in youths after excess of their melancholy state.”

Any knowledge could be found and proven within the right text; this was Horatio’s faith over God, and his source of intimacy with the hunger known by the hilt alone. Fortinbras thumbed at it the way many had between lines of text, annotated the same--‘ _ alas, the inescapable disposition of man’ _ \--but approached more directly. Heat flowered in Horatio’s cheeks.

“First hits winter, sir, and with relentless amercement. However previous arrant, he wakes in beggarly account, his only excess in his disbalance of humor and cerements. Current charactery paints in place of his proper candle instead the ever-present and ineffectual charity of his hearth, who burns bright on him late after Apollo’s retirement--indeed, ‘tis by cricket’s cry all climatures of his person speak themselves in furious blastment against his continuate sleep. Denote as well that distemperature both drains the blood and endues it in excess by the hour, and that ‘tis now ingraft how he speaks in palmy stupor of naught but delusion: indeed, the path of his understanding is not so clearly walked that he may distinguish events recent passed--asks he after mother and uncle and makes puddled the prodigies of which I have witnessed. I prithee observe these as any but simple quiddities in common tongue. Such is his state beyond improvement, and as it shows not well, I beseech you--”

“Good Horatio!” Fortinbras halted the other with a wide palm and a deep bellow. He wrestled the vial of suspicious herb away with brutish might, setting it down on the table before them to the all the more frightening clack against the wood. “Patience.”

Even in his texts, Horatio had never been patient. He would turn pages at his own will if only to confirm that there was more to follow. “I would at least bring it forth,” he insisted. “If you hear of his condition, you hear belike of my continuate duty. I know naught else to keep from morbid figures.”

Aside from the hearth--for it was always the hearth--the room fell quiet, and Horatio prepared himself for patience. He watched closely for either the presence or absence of what would be his sign of success, an eventual glimmer of pity from the norwegian’s eye. It was brief, slight, and in the end, it was the tone of the pitiful laymen’s part that wrenched it outward. For no actor, Horatio managed at least this much. With a heavy sigh, Fortinbras conceded. “Remember thyself sometime to recline.”

“At his recovery,” Horatio assured, taking what he was given for a victory as he was ushered out of the kitchen, away from the herb that watched him from its place on the table. When he was to return, it had been significantly depleted, and he felt the prickle of it in his fingertips along the sides of the bowl which held the final product. That was the feeling of dread again, the shape of it in the shadow he cast as he looked into the shallow pool. 

Obvious ill-attempts at his life aside, it was a meager portion for what was to be considered the prince’s most recommended dietary regime. Really, it was easier to word it in such a way, rather than admitting that thin broth was all the prince was capable of, that he didn’t have the energy or ability to chew, or the stomach to handle those delights of nobility he so often bragged over in his formative years at university. One no longer needed rumor to understand this; in view of his bedside, it could be inferred from his stillness. Horatio waited in the crack of the door for another somber minute to roll over into the next, and he found he needed to creep closer to catch the rate of Hamlet’s breath. Another minute, and he was breathing, ever so slightly. Gazing upon him, Horatio felt all of his shelved fatigue at once, understanding very much that the single bowl in his hands was all there was as a knot came to his stomach and a heaviness came to his eyes. He brushed at the prince’s forehead to clear it of hair once again and to feel any oncoming bout of fever, though he let it rest there a moment before he set to his task. “I prithee awhile longer, my lord,” he whispered, standing straight again to commit to ill practice of his own.

It was only at Elsinore that Horatio so often found himself unsure. The norwegian ‘herb’ was undoubtedly poisonous, and it had likely been finding its subtle home in the prince’s ‘diet’ soon after one night of survival grew into more, after the other bodies had been buried but the hunger for coup remained stagnant in the air. As much as Laertes had done to muddy public opinion, the prince was still under a general guise of good reputation--that would persist so long as he was fair and so long as his madness remained within its origin at Elsinore--thus muddying the ability to finish him in kind without discretion. His illness was a convenient mask that shielded another instance of murderous conspiracy, something that was growing too commonplace for comfort. Of all of this, Horatio was sure, but in the ability to acquire something edible beyond what he’d been given to serve, and in the belief that Hamlet would last as he sought that something out, he was not. If only for the latter, as he found some place to pour the broth out, he knelt down, head hanging heavy on his shoulders, and he prayed enough, he thought, for a lifetime of prayer’s absence.

As he had suspected, when Horatio ventured out of the chambers again, he found the lower parts of the castle flooded with members of the norwegian unit, there by far more than the coincidence of their collective hunger. Their passage of signals to one another travelled quicker than Horatio’s feet could take him, and before he could return to the kitchens under the guise of returning a dish, he was intercepted. Though they had all shared the space since the initial purging of the royal family, the norwegians gained a sudden interest in who Horatio was, where he was going, what his purpose was. He answered all with restraint and a touch of vexation, with the reminder that this was the natural, proper treatment owed to him as no better than his breeding; he’d only been able to avoid it with the prince so constantly beside him, hanging off him and shooting all the indignant looks to gentry that were beyond Horatio’s capability. The thought hurt him now, but he was too preoccupied with the present to succumb to the feeling. He had no time, for Fortinbras was on him in another moment, like a devil come from the shadows, examining his expression as much as the bowl in his hands. Both were empty. “To the kitchens again?” he asked, firm and venomous. “One would think thou the only presence at Elsinore, to labor so.”

“I must confess to the knappings self-hunger. They advance me,” Horatio lied.

Once more, his acting reflected darkly in Fortinbras’ face as the man’s hand found the hilt of his blade. It was a habit more fearsome that Hamlet’s propensity for words, and it sent a chill down Horatio’s spine rather than the warmth that he much preferred--longed for, now--with the former. Even with words, Fortinbras was far from his foil, dry perhaps in so great a measure only because he understood he was opposed. “Ay, but what must the groundings glean from thy speech when it saws the air in haste unnatural even to unpracticed players? Their weak supposal may draw out unwelcomed conspiracy,” he replied, leading Horatio in some other direction all the while. 

They stopped eventually in the great hall, lit up unfairly in a lively display of ignorance toward the passing tragedy of its usual occupants, and at once, Horatio caught sight of the greatest part of Fortinbras’ company, many seated in replacement of the old. Making no particular eye contact with any of them (looking to the bowl instead), he swallowed a mass of anxiety to make room for a response. “Their supposal is for a player unknown to them.”

“Yea, how known art thou here?”

Fortinbras has been too quick, and thus, too fatal. His simple phrasing drew the anxiety back upward, riddling it through every vein as Horatio’s gaze went on a course for any dane with whom he was even slightly familiar, any that wasn’t buried or otherwise immobile. Too few, he knew, and Fortinbras knew the same, which was his triumph. He continued, if only to further exert himself, “Of the dumbshow, one may glean the perpetual sleep: begotten in illness or no. Yet, not so the name of actor.”

“Ay, sir,” Horatio said dryly.

“He has no savior then--haply a beggarly account, no more.”

“Ay,” he repeated.

With a loose beckoning, Fortinbras drew in an attendant--danish, but to no different end under an obvious authority--and passed off the bowl from Horatio’s hands to his. His eyes were like water, just as gray and blue and with all the crux of enmity swimming just beneath the surface. And just like with water, Horatio had his share of trouble traversing them, feeling a similar rise in his stomach. He was made to sit just as his body begged to sway, and made to dine among those who swayed without begging; his picture had already been painted for them, and for the indifferent extension of the staff, to the end of it being suspect. Disposable. When he was given leave to creep back up the stairs, it was only Marcellus who returned his looks, and it was likely Marcellus who prevented all else aside from the physician from interrupting an evening that was quieter than the usual pattern of fits. The prince stirred only once, asking blindly for his mother in a slurred parody of his boyhood. After dabbing the sweat from his brow, Horatio took his hand, and he quieted. The next night was similar, with the supper thrown out in the same manner, but the hours in between saw the prince wholly unconscious, remaining in that state as the night unrolled into a third, then a fourth. Surely the last, came the inevitable echoes. 

On the fifth, Horatio sat upright, not knowing when he’d lost himself to his fatigue. His hand had found its rest over the prince’s chest, and it was the sudden bout of stillness imagined there that yanked Horatio back to the waking world. With a shaking hand, he dug beneath the layers of bedsheets before him, grasping for the prince’s chin and trailing down to that part of his throat that fluttered unevenly in a weak continuation of his life. The flesh there was cold, and all about him, it was pale as the ghost that had taken it from him. Taken everything from him. Horatio’s thumb moved back upward, stroking softly along Hamlet’s jaw until he heard the crack of the door opening. Most of his will had left him--what was leftover dared him to remain just as close and to suffer the consequence for the proximity--while his habit remained, drawing his back into the proper posture. Stepping in from the shadows of the doorway, the fire light washed over the rugged shape of Marcellus’ face, mixing with the sable color of his beard. “Horatio?” he called in a hushed voice.

Horatio’s posture left him. “Still a part,” he replied, fixing himself into a slouch as Marcellus moved to meet him at the bedside. 

More so than acknowledging each other, they shared a glance at the prince in bed. “The air tells two tales,” Marcellus sniffed after a moment, drawing a hand absently to his chin, twisting at the hair there; his tone was something like idle conversation blanketed in a very grave veneer.

Horatio followed the movement out of the corner of his eye. “That my lordship is closer to crowner than crown,” he said with a nod.

“Ay, and that more than his health falls off with him. Of certain conspiracy, good Horatio, that scant shows well with you.”

“What of that?” Horatio asked. He remained very still.

“Lord Fortinbras has grown so constant as to feign even as much nativity in the court as its previous masteries, more than what lies here; so much in this that his discretion fattens itself with danish scullions, and is much attended herein. All but jewels shape the fashion of his occupation. Yet, his favor, methinks, draws tight in aversion to his original pursuits. He hath waited upon our young lord in the double-temper of an equal wait upon the swiftness of his illness, and in being denied so long, he grows impatient. Hither, his false nativity serves him in dispatch of what he should find as two weedy flowerets in otherwise his untouched harvest: not the mischief of his own sharp blade, but of the micher who lingers here no less constant than the certainty of the final act.”

“Myself?”

“Yea, even so. Your treachery.”

Finishing in his speech, Marcellus made some reach for what was at his side, pulling it forth to where Horatio kept his sudden attention; his dread overcame him, and he was sure this was his end until he saw not blade, but cloth. A bundle. Marcellus presented an unraveling handkerchief, within it a bit of bread and pie which he set down on the edge of the bedspread. Realizing how he'd been holding his breath, Horatio let out a great sigh of relief, feeling as if he'd been uncoiled. “I have no greater thanks,” he breathed.

Marcellus held up his hand in pause and continued in his solemnity. “You might not but fly hence ‘ere Apollo precedes you,” he said. “Apart of general utterance, I am in the persuasion that Norway comes in his original intent to cure you of your watchful cares this night or the next.”

“And I should flee with--”

“With the young lord.”

In another sigh, Horatio rested his elbows on the bed, his head in his hands. Before there could have ever been the optimistic image of their escape, there was only the coppery recollection of blood--how it tasted, smelled and shone a brilliant black on fortress halls, with the sound of choking gasps in quartet to complete the senses. He tried to scrub it away with his fingers at his scalp and then pressed over his eyelids, swallowing the ball of nausea clawing its way up his throat in the meantime. “Scarcely can I reach the kitchens...To venture outward is…,” he trailed off, the additional mention of the prince’s condition in his mouth along with a swirl of vomit.

“Peace, Horatio.” Marcellus pressed a hand to his back; with their conversations so few and far between, they had never breached a difference in age, but with the other shaking beneath his touch, he felt chiefly the senior. “There’s remedy there, too, if you’ll hear it. ’Tis but a doit, but buys some dram of extension.”

Horatio nodded before his words would come. “Pray tell.”

“A certain gentleman have I auspiciously come into acquaintance with, who takes his leave for France at his leisure and our convenience. He has of himself excess of land and possession which give him leave for all manner of devices unafforded you, and thus has he bought his worth in flatteries.”

“And Norway likes him?”

“One better: Norway sees him not.”

Horatio shifted his looks between Marcellus and Hamlet. “What man?” he asked, waiting for a worse hitch than the prospect of being caught and swiftly executed.

“Marry, one master Osric,” Marcellus paused, catching the brief flash of distaste in Horatio’s expression. “You know of him?” 

Horatio nodded, though in place of a face, he only pictured a lexicon done up in a froppish hat, and of the crease of frustration on Hamlet’s brow. It was a bitter memory. “He'll have us?” he muttered, imagining a parallel scenario where Hamlet might have overheard and his brow might crease again.

“In this same hour where we were first haunted--tonight if it please you,” Marcellus replied. He gave a few gentle claps to the part of Horatio’s shoulder where his hand had been resting, forcing out what he thought might resemble a smile, but was instead a tight line. “See our lord fed, gather some necessary garments, and I shall fetch the gentlemen whence he waits.”

With a final, firm hold of assurance, Marcellus withdrew himself, pausing at the doorway as the other called weakly after him. “I would do grace for grace in thanks. In excess of thanks,” Horatio stammered.

Marcellus looked past him, to where the prince was nestled pale among his blankets, the moon flush against the murky sky. While he had always looked the best with a darkness contrasting his features, it was often in despite of the circumstances. It was best as a portrait’s beauty, where it could be viewed without the impending consequences, but there was only one proper portrait of the prince hanging in a different wing, and it was of too early of a time for it to now be truly recognized as a depiction of the occupants at Elsinore. In it, the prince was younger, cheeks fat and rosy, fist curled in the flowing robes of his father to one side of him, his mother to the other. By springtime, the light from outside streamed down in its direction from the balcony where Marcellus had previously kept his watch. He drew his tongue across his lips and found the chamber door handle. “All of the spirit we had seen...never should we have imparted,” he said finally. The door closed behind him, leaving Horatio alone again to Hamlet, the hearth and great crack of thunder from the continuing storm.


End file.
